Military To Corporate - M2C

Saturday, 5 April 2014

We have already seen the most common mistakes made by
military-experienced-professionals in their resumes in our first article( to
read, click here) and our second article ( to read, click here) . Now, in this
third article of the resume series, we will see how we can write a winning
military resume that increases the probability of an interview call on the basis
of resume.

In the times of recession, the jobs are fewer and the
competition is increasing and hence it’s mandatory to showcase our military
resume in such a way to recruiters that they understand it well. Moreover, we must also know how the latest technology
(LinkedIn, job portals, professional platforms, Facebook etc ) is being utilized by the recruiters to find
the right employee.

Know Yourself Before You
Write Your Resume

If someone ask us, do you know yourself, the most obvious
answer would be, yes of-course who knows us better but when it comes to highlighting
the same on our resume, we tend to miss a number of skills. A good resume
generally highlights three important issues about us, our work experience, our
skill sets( both soft and hard) and our
values and these three are the most important parts in a resume. Since every
human being is different, no two people can have the same resume. Each one of us
has a different personality, different skill sets, and different values and
thus has varied different experiences and achievements. These are unique to us and thus reflect our
personality. Though a number of military
professionals follow the same work routine for years, their energy level,
interest, and passion will vary with each type of work and work-environment. Therefore
our resume needs to reflect our unique personality and for that it is
imperative to know our-self clearly.

Before you start the exercise of resume writing, one good
way is to write down your entire work-experiences since the time you started
working. Highlighting what all has been done and achieved so far will help in connecting
the dots and helps you in understanding your personality before you pitch your
resume for a job opening. It is extremely important to know who you are( your
strengths and weaknesses) , what your personality is( your values, skills,
likes and dislikes) and what you meant to do before you take actions to build
your profile. This way writing own resume would not only be easy but
it will be true reflection of your personality; rather the experience
highlighted in the resume will automatically define your personality. It may
sound tedious at first however it will give your resume a right alignment to
your personality and thus will show no gap between what your personality is and
what is highlighted in the resume, thereby increasing your chances of hire.

Military Soft-Skills- You Must Add

There are a few soft skills that are associated with most of
the military professionals and that even the recruiters expect from the
military professionals. Not only the recruiters assume that you have these
skills but these skills give you an edge over your civilian counterparts, whose
resumes are generally laden with professional certifications and work-related
qualifications. Highlighting these intangible soft skills in your resume which
were learned and/or honed during military career will give a competitive edge
to your resume. While there are many such soft skills, here are a few which are
the most common ones among the military professionals:-

Leadership & Team Building

Mission-Oriented Self Starter

Self- Disciplined and Organized

Team Player

Flexibility, Adaptability, & Multi-tasking ability

Honesty, loyalty, and Integrity

LinkedIn - Your Online Resume

It may surprise many as to why we have added LinkedIn in
resume writing section; however it is generally forgotten that our LinkedIn
profile is nothing but an online resume of ours. We must make note that technology
(in this case LinkedIn) if not utilized correctly
may be the reason why we aren’t getting many interview calls. Far too many recruiters check candidates’
profile on LinkedIn as well; the probability is high for middle and very high
for top management positions. In a perfect sense, the LinkedIn profile must
supplement your resume. IF you’re applying for a HR role and your LinkedIn
profile talks of security and admin, your LinkedIn profile will turn out to be
game spoiler. Let’s see with a couple of
examples on how to supplement LinkedIn with resume. Lt Col A , a non-tecn candidate, has recently retired from military and he is indecisive
whether to join HR, or security or Admin rather he is ok with any good
opportunity that comes first in his way irrespective of the domain. He has made
three industry specific resumes, one each for security, admin, and HR and
uploaded them on various job portals. His LinkedIn profile needs to highlight his
experience of each of the three domain as well as relevant key skills of each
domain. If he skips on one or two domains and write about only one domain in his LinkedIn profile, it may not align with his other two resumes. He is at disadvantage if a recruiter who is hiring for either of the two left-out domains looks at his LinkedIn profile and finds nothing relevant. Now let’s see example of Lt Col
B who is a civil engineer and has been
into the engineering domain in army, handling construction projects. He wants to pursue a career as project manager or project coordinator in
real estate, which his resume highlights about. His LinkedIn profile need not cover
his other domain experiences and expertise in great detail as was the case with Lt Col A. LinkedIn in recent times has emerged as the
most valued platform for professional hiring and therefore there is a need to
understand how best we can leverage LinkedIn for increasing our chances of
hire. A couple of more articles by M2C
that emphasis the importances of LinkedIn are here and here

Saturday, 15 February 2014

In the first article we have seen the three major mistakes
in military resumes that are very commonly made by
military-experienced-professionals( To read, click here) . In this second article of this five article series, we
have highlighted the top three reasons
why the military resumes are rejected by the recruiters even when they have the
potential and required skills for the job opportunity.

Lack of
Keywords- Resume Heading For Trash

Because of the
service constrains during the military career especially in the final years, such as remote
area postings, busy schedule, and no access to internet, we may not be aware of
the latest trends in the constantly changing job market, where new methods and
processes are introduced very frequently. One of the reasons for the rejection
of military resumes is the lack of awareness on the latest trends about the
resume writing among the about to retire or recently retired military
professionals. Though many will not use the military jargon and instead use the
corporate terms, they will still miss upon the right job specific keywords that
give edge over others.

Receiving thousands
of resume for a job opening, Many MNCs use Applicant Tracking Software ( ATS)
or internet job boards to shortlist only those resumes which come up with the
job-essential keywords. Similarly, LinkedIn is used extensively by recruiters
to find the right candidate and one of the way to find right fit is by applying
the keyword search method. Even when a recruiter is scanning your resume
manually, recruiter’s eyes are constantly searching for those job specific keywords.
Therefore the value of inclusion of keywords is that they can make or break
your chances of being called for interview.

While some
keywords are general, many of them are industry and job specific. A particular
job description typically conveys what is the position, specific experience
required, skills and education desired from a candidate. A number of job
descriptions ( They can be searched on
various job portals) for the same position will have a number of common
keywords which can be used in context of resume. Inclusion of these keywords
will convey that your experience is relevant to the job, and increase your chances of success for a job
opening.

Resume Left Open Ended- Results Not
Shown

In corporate , You are recognized by your work such as what
growth was achieved by you or what results were achieved with your
involvement and most of the these results are shown with numbers and percentages. With
the availability of data matrix in corporate, it’s even more easy to quantify
the accomplishments. Whereas in military rarely we quantify our work even
though the there is scope to quantify .
By not highlighting the results in
figures, we leave our work accomplishment
open ended and very general in nature.

Every military
training increases operational efficiency and the same improvement can also be
quantified. Every weapon training including firing conducted by an individual
on his team would have improved the operational effectiveness by a few
percentages. Similarly, every innovation or implementation of a new procedure
that saved human effort or that made cost-cutting can be quantified to an
approximate number and percentage. A good way to quantify is by asking a few
questions such as:-

·How many staff you managed or How many
individuals you trained?·What was the value of the equipment you managed?·What was the total budget you were responsible
for?·How much money did you saved?·How much you improved upon efficiency or what is
the percentage difference from before in productivity?

And the results of the questions above can narrate the
work experience, and
accomplishments in a more quantifiable
statements such as:-

·Led
120 member staff.·Enhanced
operational effectiveness of 60 member team from 65% to 80%.·Resulted
in INR 10 million savings.·Administered
budget of INR 15 million.·Reduced
inventory loss by 10%.·Developed
result oriented training program for a 800 person organization, taking the
professional standards from 70% to 80 %.

Cut, Copy, and Paste- The Resume
Sound Too General & Boring

Many a times we have seen the tendency that we ask for the
resume from other veterans who have
retired and are working in corporate, thinking that the same resume will
communicate about us also. The resume is all about highlighting your past experiences and your individual
personality in an effective manner, gaining a call for the interview. Since it’s about an individual’s personality
who has different skills sets based on his or her personality, knowledge and
experience, No two individuals can have the
same resume which highlights each one’s skills distinctly. The traditional
method of cut, copy, and paste does more harm to your chances of shortlist for
a particular opening. Even if a very professionally
written attractive but copied resume is able to fetch an interview; chances are
very high that one will not go cross interview. Guess Why?

The online templates have been copied by millions and the
same content is thus widely seen all around including on LinkedIn . The words and
the content are too general and even if we try to
tweak a few words here and there to make it work for us, The recruiter who must
have seen hundreds and thousands of such resume makes out that this one is
another copied resume. So what? A copied resume generally reflects that the person shies away from work and adopts to
easier methods.

The two most important steps in finding a job post
retirement are preparing an effective resume and making a job hunting strategy.
Resume is the first contact of the
job-seeker with the recruiter and recruiters are a experienced lot .If the
resume has been accepted for the interview call, will one who has copied the
resume will have more confidence during the interview or the one who has taken
the time and effort to put exactly one’s own personality, military skills, and experience
in the resume?

To sum it up, Resume writing is a detail-oriented process and
requires time, and effort as one needs to pen down the career history from
scratch and pull out the ones that exactly conveys the correct picture. By not
copying from other resumes, one will improve the chances of success both during the shortlist
of resume for interview call and during the interview process as what one will speak will go hand-in-hand with what
is written.

The articles in this blog aim at empowering the
retiring/retired military professionals about how to approach successful
transition from military to corporate . M2C is also sensitizing the corporate
recruiters about the business advantages of hiring military professionals. Some
of the articles published in top HR magazines can be seen here, click here .
The Team M2C with the support of military community is committed to create an environment where in
each military-experienced-professional has a respectful and dignified job post
retirement and corporate companies are eager to recruit military professionals
especially in domains other than Security and Admin.

If you think this article can be useful to someone who is
about to retire or have recently retired, Do share generously.

Sunday, 5 January 2014

In the recent
past, M2C published a number of job opportunities on its website for
military-experienced-professionals in various domains such as business
development, legal and admin, operations, and marketing for which hundreds of
resume were received; resumes ranging from two pages to 12 pages, from
stereotyped to professionally written, from general to job specific, and from
military-jargon-laden to corporate-heavy-terms. The very basic idea of writing
a resume is to effectively leverage your military skills, resulting in an
interview call. However, there were certain pit-falls observed in some military
resumes that prevented the candidate from being shortlisted despite having the
required soft skills and work-content skills. The Team M2C will try to bring
clarity on this subject through this five series article covering the common mistakes in military resumes , how
to avoid these mistakes and ,in the last, how to write job compelling resumes.
Let’s first have a look at some of the most common resume mistakes.

Military Jargon- Recruiters Don’t Understand

You were ADC to
GOC-in-C or a Col GS, Great! How does that sound to your civilian friends? Too
much of military jargon confuses the HR recruiters to the extent that not only they don’t understand what all skills you posses or what
all role you played in military but also they find it difficult to identify where you would best fit with the
company. It’s important to describe the skills,
gained during your active duty, in a transferable manner thereby showing that
these skills are equally relevant in corporate.
This would be possible if you translate the military training,
professional experience, and technical courses into civilian terminology. If needed, a line can be added about some of
the topics studied during military courses which may be common to the job
applied for.

Also, It’s
important to add only those experiences, medals or awards that are relevant to
the job applied for. Mentioning that you
were the champion of divisional level
shooting competition may make impact if
you’re applying for security job opening but would have no value for a HR job
opportunity rather it would be better to mention how you earned those
awards and what is it’s applicability
for the position you've applied for. The
translation of your military experience into corporate terminology is one of
the most challenging task you’ll face, however it is also the most essential
task. To see one of the
example of the military to corporate
translation, click here

One Size Fits All - No, Recruiters Need Specifics

Another most
common mistake in military resumes is that they are written tangent to the way
what recruiters want. Many prepare a
general resume that reflects a bit of everything, including HR, security,
Admin, operations, finances and many more, and shoot that resume for every job
opening that they come across. While on the other side, if a job opening is for
HR, the recruiter is only looking for specific work-content skills relevant to
HR domain. In India’s competitive environment, these recruiter
get hundreds of resume for a particular job opening. They have a
limited time to go through each resume and when they read vague objectives such
as “A sincere and hardworking professional seeking an opportunity that will utilize my skills” or when they read skills that aren't related
to that specific domain, probably they don’t even think twice to discard such resumes. This one
size-fits-all approach doesn't go well in job search and therefore it’s
pertinent to prepare a separate resume for HR, a separate one for Admin and
similarly for other domains; each one highlighting the specific skills set and
specific experience pertaining to that particular domain. You have to tweak your resume according to each job opening, changing the content in such a way that it emphasize the skills recruiters are looking for. A word of caution here is that don't apply for jobs that you don't qualify for. It's important to target your resume to individual jobs and domains but it is equally important that all the information mentioned is factual and not faked just to meet the job description.

A Long Resume-But Recruiters Have No Time

Another sore point, We did receive many resumes that were
almost 10 plus pages. There is no denying the fact that military professionals,
by virtue of their numerous postings in different positions, gain enormous real
life leadership , problem-solving, team
building, and crisis management experience and therefore there is always a
temptation to put across every bit of the vast experience, thinking that it may
add value to the resume and impress the recruiter. In today’s fast-paced
environment, we all are looking ways to do maximum work in minimum time but at
the same time we are compelling a recruiter to read our research-paper size
resume and expecting even positive
result. Are we correct in that? . Mentioning that you enjoy playing golf or you
like going for long drives ( Trust, we did receive such ones also ) will not
have any positive impact on the HR recruiter.
Of-course we never got any resume writing training or assistance in military during our retirement phase but we can seek professional help or even we
can take help from our civilian friends especially those who are working in the
similar positions that you are seeking .

Military professionals have rare real life experiences and
qualities that have enormous business potential , however it is observed that
much is lost in translation. In our next article of this series, we will highlight more such avoidable mistakes so that the resume doesn't place our
veterans at a disadvantage against civilian counterparts. To read the next article on military resume, click here For more info, clickhere

Saturday, 9 November 2013

Career Transition Tips # 5; The Importance of Focused Approach

In this five article
series on career transition, we have already seen the importance of accepting
the change from military to corporate ( click here), the
overwhelming benefits of starting early in career transition ( click here) , the importance
of doing self assessment ( click here ) and the
value of networking ( click here) . In this
fifth and last article, we will see the importance of
following a focused approach during career transition and the requirement of
bridging the gap between the possessed skills and the required skills for a
particular career to find the right opportunity in the corporate
world. Here, I would like to highlight upon a tendency or rather a
practice that is generally followed across the board in military and that
hinders our chances of finding the right career opportunity. In
military, The diversity and the varied nature of job allow you to qualify for a
number of career options during transition; you can be good in administration,
HR, or security besides the technical field that many of us are
mastered in. Therefore, most of us remain indecisive till the very end of our
military career about which field is most suitable for us post retirement. On
the contrary, in the corporate world, people have specializations in one
specific field wherein they acquire skills pertaining to that field, do
relevant certification courses, and acquire mastery of that specific field.
Also, If a job opening is in field of HR, the recruiters are
looking for an individual who is competent in HR profile and the knowledge that
one has of other domains such as security doesn’t have any weight-age or very
less, if at all any, for these recruiters. In their language, for other
domains, they have different people working and they are thus focused with the
skill-set required for one particular domain only.

We may think that
remaining flexible allows us to enter the corporate world with a number of
options to choose from but the fact of the matter is sooner or later one has to
make a decision as to which particular domain one wants to enter into and
sooner we make the decision, better it is. Let’s understand with the help of an
hypothetical example of two candidates as to why it is important to pick
the right field early and thereafter apply efforts to become competitive in
that field. Two years prior to retirement, Lt Col A did his detail
self-assessment of skills, carried out analysis of various career opportunities
available, matched his skills with various careers, seek professional help, and
after adequate brain-storming over a period of time, decided that HR will turn
out to be the most suitable career path for him. Thereafter, once decided, he learned
more about HR and contacted a few of his friends already in this field. He also
networked with a few top professionals of the same field and realized what is
necessary to fill the gap between his present skills and required skills for a
competent profile in HR. He also studies the profile of a number of
professionals in the field of HR and noted the common courses/certifications
done by all. Thereafter he crafted a road-map on how to be a
competent job seeker in HR profile ;a plan that included the skills
required to be gained, certification courses needed to be done and knowledge
required to attained. During his interaction with the senior HR professionals,
he realized the importance of an MBA degree from a top b-school and hence
decided to give GMAT well in advance,while in active service only. His profile
on his resume and LinkedIn was also very much align with the chosen field of
HR. He also joined a various HR specific groups on LinkedIn and actively
participated in various discussions. Whereas Lt Col B was happy
with the fact that he has a number of options to choose from and hence can
apply for any job in the corporate world when he retires. He neither did any
course or preparation for MBA nor gained any specific knowledge
pertaining to one particular field. He prepared a general resume from the
available template resumes on web and uploaded that on various job portals and his
LinkedIn profile.

Out of Lt col A or Lt
col B, whom do you think have better chances of a progressive career field.
While candidate A adopted a very focused, tunnel approach , which is in line
with the approach followed by successful corporate professionals in
that field, candidate B adopted an extremely general approach and is ok with
any opportunity that comes his way. In about 10 years time, it is highly likely
that A has climbed from middle management to top management whereas
B has changed a few jobs and now feels stagnated in his profession. It
is extremely important to understand that , in today’s highly competitive
world, planning for future career will do us no good until we have the
necessary skills to compete for these jobs. Until we decide which
career we want to choose, it would be extremely difficult to gain skills
required for that particular career. Many of you would be
surprised to know that even b-schools are known for their specializations and
hence if someone has chosen the field of consultancy, INSEAD has to figure in
the chosen b-schools list, or entrepreneurs would prefer to be in
Babson. The corporate world demands that you be specific and specialized for
one particular job; your familiarization with others is a secondary issue but
the primary and the most important remains is your competency in one particular
field.

Even for candidate A ,
it is mandatory to remain current and up to date with the required competencies
and therefore remain in learning mode through opportunities available in
institution or through own endeavors for optimal performance in the current
role and for any contingencies such as change of job. How can we afford to
ignore the corporate requirement and remain convince with self-held opinion
that it’s good to remain flexible till the very end and choose any field that
comes our way. For those who find it extremely difficult to choose
which career path is most suitable, A better option would be to pursue an MBAdegree ( click here )from a top b-school immediately after your transition and decide there
in b-school on which career path to be taken.

How did you find this
five-article series, If you liked the articles, kindly press the
like button ( click here) and share with your friends for creating awareness among the
military community and for empowering each one of us to confidently face the corporate
world, helping in seamless transition from military to corporate.

Sunday, 27 October 2013

Career Transition Tips # 4; The Power Of Networking

“Networking has turned
out to be the most powerful tool for job hunting in the recent times”.

In this five articles series on career transition, we have already seen the value of
accepting the change of uniform from military to corporate( click here), the
overwhelming benefits of starting early in career transition( click here) , and the
importance of knowing yourself ( click here). In this fourth article, we will
see the advantages of networking and what best practices the retiring/retired
military professionals can employ for a better career.

With the
popularity of social and professionals platforms such as facebook and LinkedIn
,Networking has gained enormous importance in today’s time for finding the
right job opportunity. The traditional method of meeting each other also hold
the importance though in today’s fast –paced
environment , there is too little time for face-to-face socializing and
networking.

Military professionals aren't encouraged to take active participation
on social platforms during their military service due to the services
constrains. On the other side, Networking is an art which an individual learns
gradually, spending time on these platforms and examining new techniques. Therefore, when a serving personnel is on the verge of retirement, his network is
restricted to only his circle, which constitutes mostly military professionals,
whereas he is stepping into a world which is full of corporate people, who are
unfamiliar to him. Also, In the times of recession and gloomy economy,
employers and recruiters just don’t want a bad hire and therefore they want to
recruit someone whose referrals are available to them from a trustworthy
contact. All this together places the military professional at a major
disadvantage when it’s time for him to enter the corporate world. A few practices can help military
professionals in finding their dream job with less stress.

An account
on these social platforms will mark your presence for further exploitation. A
LinkedIn account is your mini-resume and hence gives a good glance of your
profile. Make sure to complete your profile in all aspects as doing so increases your chances of meeting the
eye of the recruiter. LinkedIn is used extensively by recruiters to find the
suitable candidates for their companies. Make sure your profile has
recommendations from your links or contacts.

If you have
lost touch with your school or college friends who are in corporate, use
facebook and LinkedIn to get in touch with them. Those friends have been in corporate for long and can really
help you not only in understanding the
corporate dynamics but also in finding a suitable job in corporate. Suppose
your school days friend happens to be connected with the recruiter of the
company that you would like to work
with, Your friend can act as the required link between you and the recruiter. Try
to take out some time during your leave to connect with some of your friends in
corporate.

The social platforms
also have companies pages and following them may help you in finding the job
openings in that particular company( For M2C’s company page, click here and
here).

Once you've shortlisted the career that you’re interested in, you can join the domain
specific groups to know the various practices,
and take part in discussion related to these groups. For example, if you’re
interested in Aerospace and Defence industry, joining groups of this field will
allow you to interact with professionals working in various Aerospace and
Defence industries. You can even connect with them and seek their suggestion on
how to make your profile stronger. Also once you actively participate in
various discussions on these groups, you will start getting noticed by the
industry people and you will find more and more people are viewing your
profile. This way you increase your chances of your profile meeting the eye of
the recruiter.

Once you’ve
shortlisted 20-30 companies that you want to work with, you can use the search
engine in LinkedIn to know which all employees are from military in that company. For
example you are interested in working with XYZ company and you want to know the work culture and the
environment from a ex-military professional working in that company, you may
search with the company’s name and Indian army or Air force or Navy , you will get a list of military
experienced professionals who have worked in the past or are working presently
with the company. You can even be friend with them to get a lead for working
with that company. The shared values of our past military profession allows an
opportunity for us to connect with other military professionals and help out each other.

In this
telescopic world, networking has become an essential job finding tool and a
detailed understanding of the best practices in networking allows the exploitation of this
tool to our advantage. Those who actively engage with other professionals face
to face and also on social platforms will gain more than those who use only one
of the two ways. Other related articleHow to exploit best out of networking sites

Sunday, 13 October 2013

Career Transition Tips # 3; Know Thyself Before Choosing Right Career

In this five articles series, we have
already explored the value of accepting the change of uniform from military to
corporate( click here) and the overwhelming benefits of starting early for our
career transition ( click here). In this third article, which is also written in
the logical sequence of events during transition, we will understand what all
we need to know about our-self and what is the value in doing some homework on ourself before we move onto finding the suitable career path for our
second innings.

While many will contest this
need of knowing our-self with the statement that you've been living with
yourself all life and no body knows you better than yourself and therefore, you don’t require any discovery of
yourself. The fact is that we don’t understand to the fullness who we are and what
skills we have to offer. Many a times we would have come across so many veterans who switch from one industry domain to another on the pretext that a particular
industry doesn't suit their requirements, however they fail to first identify three issues i.e
what do they like the most, what best they have to offer and which domain
aligns the most with the first two requirements. The most suited industry for a person will have an environment and work requirement which is most align with skills and preferences of that person. Therefore, before we explore the web for the
various career options, It’s mandatory that we do homework on our self. So what
does this homework entails and how best we can do it? The answer to this
question can possibly be found in answers to a
set of these five questions:-

ØDo
you know your soft skills and hard or work content skills?

ØWhat
you want to do for the rest of your life? Do you feel that you don’t want to
join any hierarchical structure and you feel comfortable with independent work
without any external interference? or Do you feel comfortable with hierarchical
structure of the corporate organisations?

ØDo you know which work you like, and which you don’t
and what are your favorite working conditions- team member/independent or
isolation, field work/indoor work, geographical location such as
urban/semi-urban/rural, weather condition in terms of cold/warm and so on ?

ØAre
you a go –getter or you generally work at your own pace without time constrains?

ØDo
you look forward to a busy, responsible and progressive career or you want a easy
workplace having time for yourself and your family? Do you want to earn lots of
money or you are happy with a limited amount?

Once you will sit down to write
answers to these questions, you will find that each question has raised many
more sub questions to be answered before you find answer to any one of the
above mentioned five. If you find answer to the first question “ Do you know
your soft and hard skills”, you will come across questions such as what have I done
till now , what are my strengths and weaknesses, which areas I have expertise in,
which all transferable skills I have and so many other logical questions. Therefore, it’s a
comprehensive exercise in itself before we know which career path is the most
suitable path for us. It’s only when we have done this
exercise on our personality, skills, interests and liabilities that we can
move forward to finding which career option is most suitable and which one is least. A career councelling can help you in self assessment and in finding the right career in your transition (click here)

Saturday, 5 October 2013

Career Transition Tips # 2- Start Early

We
understood the importance of accepting the change from military to corporate in
our previous article( click here). In this
second article of this five series articles, we will understand the importance
of starting early and what role it plays in the seamless transition to civil
world. But before that, An exercise we all must do is to find out the right
time to hang your boots. This will not only bring clarity to your thought
process and allow you to prepare better for your second career but it will also
prevent you from taking knee-jerk decisions during transition. We have
adequately discussed the ways to find the right time to hang your boots. (
click here and here ).

In military whenever we’re
assigned with a mission or task, we generally execute the task in a meticulous
and organized manner, applying time,
effort and skills in ensuring the success of it. However, we don’t apply the
same process when it comes to planning our career post retirement from military;
rather planning for career transition is given the least priority in our
scheme of things. Why do you have to wait till the last day to see a career
possibility outside. Why don’t you start preparing your career transition
diligently when you have about two plus years to retire. Although it looks like a very general point, however, if executed properly, it will pay you rich dividends in terms
of progressive career and high salaried job opportunities. Starting early will place
you in an unimaginable comfort zone much ahead of your counterparts who started
late. One analogy that has been most commonly
heard across the board in military is that there is a lot of time in the
transition and one must live in the present. This wrong analogy is the reason
why many of us don’t get successful at the first hand in the corporate world
and it increases the difficulties of the challenges faced by military leaders
during career transition( click here) . Why we didn't apply the same analogy
while preparing for staff college or some similar exams for which we start preparing a year plus in advance. Preparing for career
transition is no different than preparing for staff college exams. Let’s see
the disadvantages of not planning your
career early:-

Unaware about
the most suitable career at the time of transition, high probability of choosing the wrong career path.

Lack of knowledge
about the industry and the current practices in corporate.

Lack of
corporate munitions such as professional certifications/GMAT score.

Poor
networking in corporate.

Unaware of
the right practices for job search.

Difficulty in transformation from military to corporateand problems in translating skills

Extremely
stressful career transition.

Having realized that starting late
is an extremely wrong decision and having found out the right time to hang your
boots, The question arises in our mind is what is the right time to start your
preparation. The ideal time to start with
serious preparation for your second career will vary from individual to
individual as those who have been well connected with the corporate world, into
reading about the industry practices, and networking with the right connections
in corporate will probably require less time than those who have restricted
their vision to four walls of military compartment. Ideally one must retouch
with the lost civilian connections
irrespective of the years left in transition. Networking is the most important
tool now a days for finding the right job and therefore it pays to network with
the right set of people. As a broad
guideline, starting two years before your retirement will provide you the right
start for your second career. Again, It
is important that we keep our-self abreast
with the issues of career switch, know the latest trends in market, and gain
knowledge pertaining to your selected domain as much as possible and not wait
for last two years.

Starting early has overwhelming benefits and it gives adequate time to
you to choose the right career path, gain knowledge and certifications about
that career, prepare and give GMAT for MBA, network with the right people, and exercise
the right job hunting practices. If you have time for your career transition, a
career counseling can help you in finding the right career and how to employ
your efforts in the right direction, resulting in a successful career
transition( click here). To read the second article of this five article series, click here